A South Asia scholar from Columbia University, known for his affinity with students and potential donors alike, has been selected as the 10th chancellor of UC Berkeley.

Nicholas Dirks, 61, who is also Columbia's executive vice president of Arts and Sciences, will begin his new job June 1. UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau, who had expected to retire in December, will stay through May.

On Thursday, UC President Mark Yudof announced his choice of Dirks to lead one of the premier research universities in the world.

"I'm confident he will be a great fit for UC Berkeley," Yudof said. "Nicholas Dirks is a highly accomplished leader with the sensibilities and knowledge of a humanist, as well as extensive fundraising, academic and administrative expertise."

At UC Berkeley, Dirks will need all of those talents - and the ability to work with a diverse and restive student body prone to protest.

"My hope for somebody new is that they'd be more actively supportive of student activism," said political science major Maggie Hardy of Students for a Democratic University. "I'd like to not see a repeat of what happened last fall."

Hardy was referring to an Occupy protest at UC Berkeley in which police beat students with batons as they erected tents on campus. The incident prompted lawsuits, fury among students and condemnation by faculty.

Dirks appears to have at least some credibility with protesters.

In 2007, student hunger strikers demanded that Columbia change its Eurocentric core curriculum to include Third World offerings. They did not immediately warm to the administration's response - which was to agree with them.

Dirks was the primary point man for the administration, said John Coatsworth, Columbia's provost.

Dirks told the protesters that Columbia was already investing millions in ethnic studies as a result of earlier meetings with students, and that the university would, in fact, develop a global core curriculum.

"He had both the qualities needed to talk to the students, and the credibility to convince them that the university was committed to following through," Coatsworth said, speaking of Dirks with a mixture of pride and wistfulness.

"He's really one of the most talented - if not the most talented - administrator I've encountered in a long time. I think Berkeley's got a winner," Coatsworth said. "We're sorry to see him go."

Author of 3 books

A professor of anthropology and history, Dirks has written three books on India. He oversees six of Columbia's schools and dozens of departments, institutes and university centers and serves as a senior fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations, a well-known think tank. His late father, J. Edward Dirks, was a vice chancellor at UC Santa Cruz in the 1970s.

Dirks could not be reached for comment.

He was among nearly a dozen finalists who emerged after a committee at Cal spent six months studying hundreds of applications. A final selection was made at Yudof's office.

"He has an outstanding record of leadership, he's an eminent scholar and he has a good record of administration - these are qualities that we value at Berkeley," said Fiona Doyle, an engineering professor who served on the selection committee. "And he demonstrated an openness that we liked."

Doyle said Dirks' experience also extends beyond the rarefied world of a wealthy, private university. He taught at the University of Michigan before arriving at Columbia in 1997.

She and others on the committee won't disclose the questions they asked the candidates during the October interviews or their responses.

But another search committee member, Bahar Navab, a doctoral student in health services and president of the Graduate Assembly, said she found herself trusting Dirks.

"I felt that he was someone I could look up to and have respect for," Navab said, saying she'd feel comfortable working with him to improve student services.

Fundraising skills

The interviewers were also impressed with Dirks' fundraising skills. Those are essential at Berkeley, a public campus forced to behave like a private university to recruit top faculty.

Coatsworth, Columbia's provost, said Dirks was "extraordinary" at persuading generous donors to be even more generous.

"You have to be pretty simpatico to do that," Coatsworth said. "But he also knows what he's talking about. He commands respect, and he's a great scholar."

The details of Dirks' contract won't be disclosed until the UC regents approve his appointment later this month or in early December, said UC spokesman Steve Montiel.